AGRIBUSINESS: Census Finds Fewer Farms In Iowa

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The 2012 Census of Agriculture is now out and it reports Iowa has lost about 4,000 farms.

Statewide, the number of farms in 2012 was just under 89,000, giving farms overall a 4.5 percent decrease from the last agriculture census taken in 2007.

The amount of land in farms across the state across the state has also decreased by .5 percent since 2007. In 2012 the USDA recorded more than 30.6-million acres in Iowa farms with an average farm size of 345 acres.

The biggest farms in the state have also grown. Farms of 1,000 acres or more increased more than 10 percent since 2007. Smaller farms between 10 and 49 acres also increased while all other farm categories decreased in size.

Government payments made out to Iowa farms increased more than 10 percent to just over $782,000 in 2012.

The Census of Agriculture is conducted every five years by the USDA’s national agriculture statistics service.

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William Denison

As a Iowa farmer you could become very rich very fast if you were allowed to grow cannabis.
By: KRISTEN WYATT (AP)

DENVER (AP) — Colorado’s legal marijuana market is far exceeding tax expectations, according to a budget proposal released Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper that gives the first official estimate of how much the state expects to make from pot taxes.

The proposal outlines plans to spend some $99 million next fiscal year on substance abuse prevention, youth marijuana use prevention and other priorities. The money would come from a statewide 12.9 percent sales tax on recreational pot. Colorado’s total pot sales next fiscal year were estimated to be about $610 million.

And just think, all the programs we were told were to help small family farms actually helped entrench large corporate farms and the tax payers footed the bill. Now they want more money from the tax payers to help people get started in farming…